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While this may be true for actors who have a name recognition, anyway, it gets interesting with artists nobody knows like film music composers...introduce an unknown as 3-time OSCAR-winner and it will certainly raise eyebrows which wouldn't move a millimeter if you'd just say film music composer XY.

That's what the makers of 'Deep Blue Sea' said about their makos, too.

After watching 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Lara Croft's Mummy' now, it dawns on me that the end of the movie industry may be all this damn cross-referencing. This was not a film about the character Henry Jones jr., but an exercise in outdoing 'Tomb Raider' and 'Mummy' movies. Without much success, i may add....man-eating ants???? Aren't there enough frightening real creatures in the Amazonas, anyway? Why has Spielberg to compete with loud, noisy and decidedly empty CGI pictures? There are so many great myths in christian culture, but alas, we are treated to a shabby spectacle without mystery, with chases seen many moons before and a cast respectfully rotting away at the hands of a director who once has re-invented this very genre. God forbid the 'creative' forces at work here would try to re-invent the wheel of the mighty summer blockbuster. A good film may have come out of it.

I don't think so. The most vile and unwarranted flamethrowing most often comes from 'the fans'. Not many 'official' critics would risk their reputation by trampling a film to death because a whip in it has the wrong color.

And again, we remind us that it's only a movie - not a rocket to unchartered territories in the wide galaxy. By it's very nature it never was expected to hold a bunch of jaded Cannes critics in it's spell....and those with the highest expectations may have been the ones with the least happy faces afterwards. Judging from the whole alien-business i just know that it will be a blink on my radar, at best. Silly alien stuff is really a kind of americana tradition, isn't it?

And the really funny thing is how both ends of the spectrum get their inevitable workout: it sucks badly, really vs. 'i'm sad for you because you can't see the gift god has given you this may'... Remote Control's PR agent versus Williams' PR Agent, i suppose.

I have. It's plagiarism by whose standards? Yours or what? The only composer Williams owes more than a dime is Prokoviev. At least for his scherzos.

The former, but with more thematic content and sometimes frolicking scherzos, courtesy of Sergej Prokoviev, interrupt the proceedings. It's good, actually!

So far, i like it. It is EXACTLY the kind of score you could expect from a post-2000 Williams. It was never in the cards that Williams would present us with a Cracker-Jack-Box full of surprises unheard of. Listening to the music i guess the film's rather tired, though. The Raiders March throughout has the same sleepwalking attitude as the ever-same Star Wars main/end title reprises in the prequels. Of all the old men trying to capture lightning in a botle twice, Williams' music tries valiantly, at least. Thank you, maestro, he says,with the bittersweet knowledge that this may be one of the last.

Order of the Phoenix may be a lot of things, 'good' isn't one of them. For once, i learned to appreciate the firm hand of even square Hollywood craftmanship. So many filmic transitions which begged for more operatic music to guide the audience along are simply missed....James Horner could come up with better music if he was in a wake coma making sudden finger movements with a pencil attached.

Actually, the 'Mummy' certainly was more of a workload since it's a more complex score, much more notes and a more varied orchestration.

Do you people even listen to this stuff? The 'Mummy' has a sitar and a similar chord progression in one of the themes, apart from this it's a completely different road from '13th Warrior', altogether. 4,5 stars for the effort, since it's the last big Goldsmith adventure score...and the movie is junky enough to make it a worthy follower to others which came before!

Drama scores by Williams are better than ever nowadays, action music has some inflexes of creativity but most of the time, this stuff comes off as pretty stale, thematic content could be more varied, but on the whole, it's still darn good. Regarding the question of Goldsmiths' approach to action music: he reportedly told Bruce Broughton in the mid-90s that film people actually reacted allergic to his more complicated stuff. First of all, he was considered too upfront and was often ordered to tone down his music so often that he just adjusted accordingly, secondly, he got rejected whole or partly from films and he was just too much the workaholic to risk his reputation being harmed by too many professional blunders.

It is up for debate if someone who's obviously hoarding music like a hamster without any apparent quality matrix is fit to tell people off because of their likings. 'Nemesis' is far from disgraceful, period. To dislike it because it's old news for Goldsmith is another matter.

When i heard the 'Nemesis' score in the film, i just knew that Goldsmith certainly hadn't lost anything...illness or not. The orchestration is really bare bones and it doesn't sound very exciting because of this, but how he spins a web of ideas from the central theme and writes a whole 80-minutes-score around this is ingenious. Not a colorful 'adventure' score, but a brooding, monothematic gloomy score. I like it!

Jerry Goldsmith raped my nerd-hood!!!

Well, as long as actual themes are interwoven in the action music i will be happy.

Seconded, thirded and flaming well fourthed!!! From what i could gather, the 'Crystal Skull' theme is a somewhat tranformed version of the 'Ark' theme. But you never know with these nutty french...

Is there a kind of established norm for being a 'real' artist or a 'false' one, for that matter? I find all this 'what real artists think' talking incredibly backwards...as if americans now have adapted european art snobbiness ca. 1900. It's as if people need to boast about their intellect by stating lofty things about art as if Moses brought the very definition of high art from Mount Sinai and they read it first.

Well, if it isn't Williams, i still would like to know what it is :cool: Sounds like Horner around the time he wrote "Pagemaster"....

One has to see. My biggest fear is that the film looks like the trailer, which i found not very encouraging. Apart from the deja vú's like the room with the crates, the whole thing did somehow look like 'Tomb Raider 3', at least before the Williams music starts. I guess it will be a so-so film with hopefully a great score....

But maybe most people who hype themselves up the gazoo are in for a disappointment, anyway....How good can this film possibly be, considering all the factors involved. Let's hope Williams comes out of this smelling like roses...

I'd have to agree with you there. I'm very impressed with this score, and the sound quality only adds to that. Does it sound better than on the SPFM disc? The sound there was ok, but nothing specatcular...

Yes, completely ruining whole pieces like in the last 'Star Wars' film where the 'Duel' suddenly interrupts a perfectly fine piece of music for minutes....was it 'Anakin vs. Obi-Wan' or something?

I don't like the cutesy theme much, but after listening to 'The Jump' on Intrada's website, i knew why Goldsmith is still king (of action music). Got it.